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The speakers and staff on Chess Moves 3 are: GM Joel Benjamin,
GM Pascal Charbonneau, GM Larry Christiansen, and IM Irina Krush.

Beginner/Intermediate Classes

Practical Opening Tips for White
Speaker: GM Larry Christiansen (90 minutes)
Audience (Player Rating): up to 1400

Opening theory in chess is a science unto itself. For professional players, often the opening analyses ends at move ? or even move 30 at times. That's a very difficult task for anyone! Even constant study of openings is no guarantee that you will get an advantage out of an opening.

If Black plays accurately, Black and White will equalize. On the other hand, there are numerous solid openings which lead to interesting games without the need to memorize a multitude of variations. In this course, we will cover:

• Opening principles
• The most popular club-level openings
• Tricky, tactical-based openings

Practical Opening Tips for Black
Speaker: GM Larry Christiansen (90 minutes)
Audience (Player Rating): up to 1400

A Black opening is one move behind, giving you less leeway in your approach. While White can almost get away with purely following the basic opening principles, when you play Black you've got to know exactly what you are doing. You'll learn how to choose your opening based on your personality and style:

• Choices against the King Pawn start
• Choices against the Queen Pawn start
  
  

Opening Disasters
Speaker: GM Joel Benjamin (90 minutes)
Audience (Player Rating): up to 1400

You don't have to put in long hours studying opening theory, but you must develop a sense of sound, principled opening play. Examples of openings gone horribly wrong will illustrate the deadly sins that cause such calamities. The culprits will include:

Running around with the queen
Failure to castle promptly
Inattention to threats
Improper or slow development

Exploiting Structural Advantages
Speaker: GM Joel Benjamin (90 minutes)
Audience (Player Rating): up to 1400

Philidor spoke the truth centuries ago when he said, "pawns are the soul of chess." The placement of the pawns often confers an advantage to one side. Understanding how to make these advantages stand up can bring players lots of extra points. Structural advantages are long-term in nature and require patient handling. This class will feature exploitation of various advantages, including space, weak squares, and weak pawns.

Understanding Pawn Endings
Speaker: GM Joel Benjamin (90 minutes)
Audience (Player Rating): up to 1400

Failure in the endgame can spoil an otherwise well-played game, and pawn endgames provide the foundation for all other endings. We will build from basic positions to more complex ones, focusing on essential concepts like opposition, zugswang, the pawn "race," and triangulation. Other pieces occasionally join the picture as we explore liquidation into pawn endings and transformation into queen endings.

Rook Endgame Essentials
Speaker: GM Larry Christiansen (90 minutes)
Audience (Player Rating): up to 1400

In practical play, about 50% of all endgames are Rook endgames so we'll devote time to learning important and common Rook endgames. In this class you will learn:

To win a "won" Rook endgame
To save a difficult-looking Rook endgame to a draw
Why it is usually best to keep behind the passed Pawn vs. in front or on the side
To work with the Philidor position
To work with the Lucena position, and how to build bridges
How to approach positions with one extra passed Pawn on one side and a couple of Pawns each on the other side
How to handle the exceptions — for instance, even when two extra Pawns will not win

Advanced Classes

Bishop v. Knight
Speaker: GM Joel Benjamin (90 minutes)
Audience (Player Rating): 1400 – 1900

When is one better than the other? This course will examine positions that favor each minor piece and good moments to swap one for the other. Grandmaster Benjamin will share insight on piece values gained from his experiences working on the Deep Blue project.

The Art of the Exchange Sacrifice
Speaker: GM Joel Benjamin (90 minutes)
Audience (Player Rating): 1400 – 1900

Effective use of the Exchange Sacrifice is a skill that often divides masters from lower-rated players. Combinations that lead to checkmate or material gain may be easily understood, but purely positional sacrifices do not have to be mysterious. This course will use classic examples to explain these and other key elements of such sacrifices:

Transformation of pawn structure
Central control
Piece activity
Pawn compensation

Bishop v. Knight
Speaker: GM Joel Benjamin (90 minutes)
Audience (Player Rating): 1400 – 1900

When is one better than the other? This course will examine positions that favor each minor piece and good moments to swap one for the other. Grandmaster Benjamin will share insight on piece values gained from his experiences working on the Deep Blue project.

The Art of the Exchange Sacrifice
Speaker: GM Joel Benjamin (90 minutes)
Audience (Player Rating): 1400 – 1900

Effective use of the Exchange Sacrifice is a skill that often divides masters from lower-rated players. Combinations that lead to checkmate or material gain may be easily understood, but purely positional sacrifices do not have to be mysterious. This course will use classic examples to explain these and other key elements of such sacrifices:

Transformation of pawn structure
Central control
Piece activity
Pawn compensation

The Art of Attack
Speaker: GM Larry Christiansen (90 minutes)
Audience (Player Rating): 1400 – 1900

This course is geared toward intermediate players who wish to hone their chess attacking skills and increase their understanding of tactics. In this class, we will go over two different approaches to attacking chess:

More-structured attacks (examples from Botvinnik and Kasparov)
Personal intuition (examples from Shirov, Topalov, and Tal)

Making a Chess Plan
Speaker: GM Larry Christiansen (90 minutes)
Audience (Player Rating): 1400 – 1900

One of the most difficult tasks in chess is to make a plan. To pick the right plan is even harder. In chess, there are short and long term plans. This class will give you the knowledge of what hints to look for in different types of positions based on the Pawn structure and other variables.

Winning Won Games
Speaker: GM Larry Christiansen (90 minutes)
Audience (Player Rating): 1400 – 1900

Gaining a winning position is just half the battle. Actually overcoming your opponent's stubborn resistance and forcing resignation is an essential skill for the complete chess player. This class is designed to improve this vital skill or "technique" by:

Understanding how to evaluate positions so that you know when, and when not, to take risks to close out the "won" games
Comparing your options: finishing the "won" games in style versus taking the sure bet

Use Your Imagination!
Speaker: GM Joel Benjamin (90 minutes)
Audience (Player Rating): 1400 – 1900

Surprising continuations abound in chess, waiting to be found by minds open to subtle and unconventional possibilities. Using examples from my own career, I will take you through the process of discovery of tactical combinations, positional maneuvers, and strategic plans. The imaginative solutions may seem the province of the grandmasters, but average Joes can train to look for hidden treasures, too